


God Bless Gray Sweatpants

by somewhereelse



Series: Studies in Self-Control [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-27 02:03:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13870767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somewhereelse/pseuds/somewhereelse
Summary: Season 2.5 AU. Felicity finds herself in the freshest of hells as Oliver stumbles upon what it takes to break her careful control.Companion piece, of sorts, toThe S Word.





	God Bless Gray Sweatpants

Oliver doesn’t think anything of it when he goes to open the door. Felicity texted him that she was on her way down so he crawls out of the bed where he’s vaguely trying to sleep and heads for the stairs. He knows he doesn’t have to open the door for her—Felicity is as at home in the foundry as she is in her actual home—but in his half-conscious state, his ingrained manners rise to the surface.

Not enough for him to remember to put on a shirt, though. Night absorbed some of the heat of the day, leaving their glorified basement a more pleasant temperature, but he still took off his shirt to lie down. Their relationship being what it is, he forgets to be self-conscious about the scars with her. So he tiredly picks his way up the stairs, absentmindedly scratching at his scalp, and pulls open the door at the same time the first beep of the code sounds.

Oliver expects Felicity to rush past him down to her computers so he presses his palms to his shut eyes, trying to force alertness into his brain. The choking sound she makes stills him at the same time he tries to rip his hands away from his closed eyes. He’s too slow, like his synapses aren’t firing the way he needs them to. The second it takes to open his eyes feels too long, and he imagines all sorts of Doomsday scenarios for why Felicity has made that sound.

Is it Vertigo? Did someone attack her on her way in? Has she barely managed to crawl her way to the door and he’s taking his damn sweet time about paying her attention?

No.

When he finally gets his eyes open, she’s fine. His asshole of a brain didn’t misinterpret her text, and there isn’t an emergency for him to attack. But there is someone he wants to attack, in a different sense of the word.

Felicity’s mouth has dropped open, forming an appealing ‘O’ shape perfectly framed by her bright lipstick. Her eyes are wide and glazed over behind her customary glasses. Her fingers are slack around her phone before her grip instinctively tightens and she white knuckles the poor device.

A slow smirk almost spreads its way across his face before he locks it down. So this is what it’ll take to break Felicity’s carefully constructed façade of control: messy hair, tired eyes, no shirt, gray sweatpants, and bare feet.

For a minute there, vain as it is, he thought Felicity was becoming immune to his shirtlessness. Before, it was always a good ego boost to catch her staring, the casual way she would reach for her daily necklace and rake her eyes down his body. These days, she’s stopped reacting so purely to his physicality. It’s left him strangely dejected when put together with this stalemate they’ve reached. And by stalemate, he means his screw up. 

Oliver has said “I love you” to women before. Both insincerely (the girl who gave him his first blowjob) and sincerely (Laurel, despite how much he used and abused her love in return). The “lie” to Slade was a rare case of not realizing that he meant it. Up until the second he said the words, Oliver thought it’d be a lie. They had _agreed_  it was a lie. He’s pretty sure Felicity’s surprised gasp wasn’t just to sell it for the cameras but also because she was genuinely shocked by his obvious _not_  lying.

Then he bungled her gentle probing on Lian Yu, unsure what to do with the feelings that proved truer than expected. Ever since, Felicity’s changed how she acts around him. It’s like she’s convinced herself not to take him seriously. That he doesn’t mean any of his weighted interactions with her now like he didn’t mean it back then. 

In certain ways, the surety has freed her to be more careless with him. She doesn’t have to worry about her casual touches being misconstrued because they’re “unthinkable”. Yet despite being more easily flirtatious, to the point Dig and Roy urge him into action behind her back, Felicity’s somehow more closed off.

He’s no longer blessed with their quiet intimate moments. He’s not the person she turns to after a rough day, her pillar of strength to lean on. No, that’s Diggle and even Roy now, people she doesn’t maintain a constant superficial layer of “bright, shiny, and happy” around. Honestly, he’d prefer it the other way around, for her behavior to be more guarded and her emotions more accessible. 

He’s dropped hints, massive anvils of hints, to imply that he knows about her attraction, knows her feelings might—probably, almost definitely—run deeper than simple friendship, and most importantly knows his own attraction and feelings match hers. But Felicity only steps gingerly around them, as if they’re landmines and not invitations to further entrench herself in his life. Since she’s continued ignoring them, Oliver’s been psyching himself up to listen to Diggle and actually be straightforward. He was so sure that his open door approach would work that Dig will never let him live it down if he actually, directly, asks Felicity out.

As much as he needs to sack up and do something about the line in the sand he drew, he doesn’t want to force Felicity into a situation she’s actively avoiding. And as much as she’s all for team bonding lately, she’s been avoiding one on one time with him. It’s left them in a strange place where he isn’t going to make the first move to avoid making her uncomfortable, but Felicity won’t make the first move either because, presumably, she thinks he’s already let her down gently in his own way. 

This, however, is promising. 

For starters, they’re alone, a rare occurrence these days. The sterile overhead industrial lighting is off, leaving only the ambient glow from the lamps at their workstations. Unlike his underdressed self, Felicity is still fully armored in one of those dresses she acquired during the stint as his executive assistant. Even though it’s common enough for him to be half-dressed and her impeccably so, something about the contrast and atmosphere throws him off balance.

He can’t really remember where she’s coming from that requires her to still be so dressed up. Was tonight her dinner with a satisfied client wanting to explore investing in her fledging startup? It irks him that he didn’t think to look into the client beforehand. It irks him more that he’s lost the ability to invest in her future himself.

But Oliver forces himself to focus on the present because tonight feels _charged_ , and he’s always been an opportunistic bastard. 

Felicity is clearly as affected by the unintentionally intimate setting as he is. She’s staring at him like she wants to see her lipstick on his skin, and Oliver’s entirely on board with that plan. In fact, he’s more than willing to help her along.

He shifts his stance slightly so his already low-slung sweatpants slip further down his hips. Her eyes widen almost comically, hand flying to her chest and specifically the cutout over her cleavage. His own eyes slide closed a little watching the way she instinctually touches herself.

“You wanted to show me something?”

The carefully chosen words, in a register close to his Arrow voice, startle her, and he can almost see the suggestive images flashing behind her eyelids before Felicity nods, swallowing visibly. He leans back a little, creating the illusion of giving her more space without moving his feet an inch. Felicity’s too distracted to notice his deception so she steps forward to move past him, laying a gentle hand on his forearm for balance. They both jump at the contact, and she quickly retracts her touch then darts past, heels clicking down the metal stairs. Instead of heading for her screen bank, she floats in the free space, watching as he slowly descends.

“Are you—are you alone?”

He pauses to watch her eyes scan the darkened area, lingering in the corner of his “bedroom”. She can’t possibly think he has someone _here_. In the secret base that only—okay, more people than he originally intended know about. “No,” Oliver shakes his head, “You’re the only woman I’m waiting for.”

The statement is heated, somehow both more specific and more vague than he meant to communicate. But it’s true. Tonight, Felicity is the only one he’s expecting, and potentially for the rest of his life, she’s the only woman he’d wait patiently for, unwilling and unable to give up on one day deserving her love.

Her gaze is searing as she absorbs the full meaning of his words. Her eyes meet his for a moment, softening at the confirmation that must be written all over his face. When he reaches the last step, Felicity tosses her purse in the direction of her desk, phone clattering to the concrete floor.  

The suffocating tension they—and everyone else—have been choking on for too long now, if he’s being completely honest, meets an abrupt end. Before another second passes, he's got her legs around his waist and is walking them to the bed she bought him months ago. Best of all, Felicity’s latched onto his mouth like she needs him to survive, and he’s not at all going to argue with her.

Oliver’s pretty sure they simultaneously took that first step towards each other. His brain basically blanked once he got his hands on Felicity’s ass. He’s never been one for lyricism, but knowing they’re here with mutual understanding, as brief and nonverbal as it was, is all the happy ending—or beginning—that he needs.

 

* * *

 

Felicity knows she doesn’t have to go back to the lair. She could just leave the search results till morning or check them from her tablet for anything noteworthy. But the Arrow cave is on her way home from dinner, sort of, and she’s gotten used to working on giant dual, sometimes triple, monitors. She sends a quick text to Oliver on the off chance he’s actually sleeping and not just blankly staring at the ceiling then grabs her purse and heads inside. 

The Glades is in yet another half-hearted recovery process from Slade’s siege so the boys have been drilling situational awareness into her head these past few weeks. She clutches her taser, legal but probably made illegal by her modifications, in one hand and sprints all the way to the basement door. Before she can finish entering the code, Oliver opens it from the inside.

Felicity is about to brush past him, and their weird tenseness lately, in favor of her computers, but the sight of him literally stops her in her tracks.

When she says tension, Felicity means that Oliver’s been acting like a more charming version of the broody, murderous, well-intentioned vigilante she knows and lo—works with and she has no idea what to do with that. Something about incapacitating Slade _without_ resorting to those pesky murderous tendencies has lightened him. Suddenly, he’s quicker to, well, not quite smile but at least he’s no longer trying to glare Roy into being a better archer. This Oliver is kind of dorky, hasn’t met a bad pun he doesn’t find hilarious against his better judgment, and doesn’t seem to care if her heart explodes from all the damn flirting he’s doing. He’s become hazardous to her heart rate, blood pressure, and overall mental health.

Especially when she _knows_ , like to the very depths of her soul, that he doesn’t mean a single lingering touch or electrifying look or charming word.

They’ve just finally managed to unearth enough of Oliver’s actual personality so that some of his innate flirtatiousness shines through. To an extent. Not when it comes to, like, being nice to the teenaged pizza delivery boy who maybe has a crush on her. 

That leaves Felicity trying her damnedest to remind herself on a daily, if not hourly, basis to not read anything more into Oliver’s walls coming down, relatively speaking for _him_ that is. So really the weird tension is her attempting to act normal, relatively speaking for _her_ that is, while Oliver eases back into being a communicative and demonstrative human. She’s pretty sure she’s failing.

He’s _not_ interested in her. He made that as clear as possible on Lian Yu while respecting their friendship enough to not verbally reject her when her stress-induced delusions convinced her he meant it when he said, “I love you.” (They had _agreed_ it was a lie.) He’s just trying to not act like a brick wall, and she needs to be more supportive of that progress instead of dwelling on the unthinkable.

The unthinkable is really hard to not dwell on when he’s looking like _that_. All well-tousled and well-muscled and well-everything.  _Hands off, Smoak_ is on constant loop in her head as she gawks.

Felicity thought she had become, well, not immune but at least better about not obviously ogling shirtless!Oliver. After all, almost every day since she’d joined the team, she’s had just about every iteration of shirtless!Oliver parading around. There was sweaty and broody and injured and cocky and defeated and angry and—was she listing the seven dwarfs or his moods? In any case, somehow she’s never dealt with sleepy shirtless!Oliver with his hair all askew and his skin looking all touchable and ready for cuddling.

Sure, when he’s practically dripping sweat on her, she wants to lick him. But when he’s like this, she wants to find out if temperature affects him, if his skin emits as much heat as she’s always assumed or if he’s cool to the touch. She wants to feel the texture of his scars and see if he’s at all ticklish or if the years have taken that from him, too. 

Felicity really finds herself rooting for gravity to hiccup and drag down his already excessively low-slung sweatpants. 

As if summoned by her filthy, inappropriate thoughts, the waistband slips further, revealing more of his hipbones and severely testing her willpower. The sight is so arresting it takes her another moment to belatedly realize that Oliver’s asked her a question. Something about what she's doing there, if she has something to show him.

_Um, yes_. Especially if he has something to show her in return.

Wait, _no_. Not like that. The _something_ she wants to show him has to do with search results, not _anatomy_.

Nodding, Felicity steps forward, instinctively reaching for his arm since her knees feel a little wobbly, not that she’d admit that to him in a hundred years. What should be a light, platonic touch is anything but, and they both spring apart at the charged contact. Face reddening, she chooses to again ignore the weird tension and makes a break for her computers.

When she reaches solid ground, she pauses, realizing that what she assumed was sleepy shirtless!Oliver might actually be _post-coital_ shirtless!Oliver. The question slips out before she can stop herself, eyes moving to where his “bed” is. Oliver is quick to deny it, and she expects him to make a flirtatious quip, which, strange as it is, has become the new normal.

Instead of something breezy and flippant, his answer is sincere, heavy with longing, leaving so much between the lines for her to read.

No one, but no one, has ever waited for her. Not her father who left when she was almost too young to remember, not her mother who seemed relieved to no longer be responsible for her, not Cooper who— She shakes her head. That’s unfair to a boy who’d been naively self-sacrificing. And irrelevant in the current moment.

Not when she has Oliver Queen, figuratively and almost literally, stripped bare before her. It’s too much, more than she could have imagined, especially given the events of mere months ago. Felicity is about to second guess him because she’s absolutely positive she’s once again reading too much into Oliver and his unfortunate way of pulling all her focus, before he finally reaches the same level. The look on his face confirms everything.

He means it.

He meant it then and he means it now and he meant every moment in between. 

Well that’s just—

Everything in her sags a little. The next thing she knows her hands are empty before they’re occupied again. With Oliver. His face, his back, his arms. Everything about him is hers for the taking, like she is for him.

 


End file.
